


Almost Heaven

by InOmniaParatus



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pining, spoilers for K2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 08:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12164886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InOmniaParatus/pseuds/InOmniaParatus
Summary: Merlin, laid up in hospital, deals with his idiot visitors.





	Almost Heaven

Eggsy brought him chicken. Kentucky fried. Again.  
  
It was a damned good thing that he hadn’t said he liked tandoori cat or something, because once he latched into something, the lad apparently didn’t do anything in half measures.  
  
There were never any drumsticks, he had noticed, only thighs and breasts. He couldn’t tell if this was some sort of chav-grown gesture of _only best for you, mate_ or if it was a pointed omission.  
  
Merlin rubbed his bandaged knees against the mattress. The itch was the worst part—no, not the worst, but close. His legs itched, all the time. First thing in the fucking morning, every morning, he’d reach down to scratch his calf, and every morning his fingers would touch thin air and remind him of everything he’d lost.  
  
“Tilde got her dad’s permission. You know, to marry a common type like me,” Eggsy was rambling. “I thought for sure after that dinner, I’d be off the list.”  
  
He said nothing. Eggsy pushed cole slaw around with his spoon.  
  
“I’d kinda hoped, to be honest. I don’t wanna be a prince.”  
  
Merlin trampled down the futile urge to scratch. “No. You’re much better suited to knighthood.”  
  
Eggsy half-smiled and nodded once. Merlin was only saying aloud what the lad had already been telling himself, but that was often all one really needed.  
  
“You know, I reckon you should get yourself some of those bouncy razor blade feet, like that Gazelle had. That would be well cool.”  
  
☂☂☂  
  
Harry brought him grapes. Green ones. Again.  
  
To hell with Kingsman scotch. They could start a fucking winery with the grapes, because sometimes nothing could penetrate Harry’s sense of propriety.  
  
“The blueprints for the shop were located in a safety deposit box at C. Hoare  & Co. Which, honestly, seems extremely careless. How many safety deposit boxes have I broken into over the years?”  
  
It was a rhetorical question, which was fortunate, because Merlin couldn’t care less. He didn’t want to think about the shop, about the wreckage, about Arthur and the others. He didn’t want to think about how it was just the three of them, now, rebuilding on the goodwill of a band of Yankees.  
  
“Headhunting will be more of an issue than architecture, unfortunately. We will need to fill the ranks, elect a new Arthur at some point, and interview tailors for both skill and discretion. We’ll also have to get into touch with the company that manufactures our bulletproof fabric. I believe they’re based in Calais, so you’d better do it. Your French is better.”  
  
Harry’s problem, he decided, was that he was just so damn _happy_ to be alive.  
  
☂☂☂  
  
Ginger brought him pain meds. Good ones. Bless.  
  
That wasn’t right, of course. She was called Whiskey now, a harsh moniker that seemed two sizes too big for her. She was as capable as any of them—more, even—but the name just didn’t suit.  
  
He’d get used to it, of course. His brain would make the switch, eventually, like it does when childhood mates want to be called _James_ instead of _Jamie_.  
  
“We’ve offered bring them cots,” she whispered. “It can’t be good for them to sleep like that.”  
  
The Galahads, sentimental twats that they were, had spent the last week sleeping sprawled out in the formica chairs in his room. They’d been offered hotel suites, too, he knew. Champagne believed them to have some sort of PTSD-triggered co-dependency and pushed hard for therapy. Harry had thrown a tantrum, Eggsy had followed suit, and Merlin would be damned if he’d be the only one with a headshrinker.  
  
Eggsy murmured in his sleep, and nuzzled into the hand Merlin hadn’t realized was carding through the dirty-blond strands.  
  
  
☂☂☂  
  
“The thing is,” Eggsy was whinging. “I love her. I do. Totally. But I dunno if I’m in love with her, you feel me?”  
  
Merlin mostly ignored the little melodrama playing out at his bedside. He wondered, munching on still more chicken, if he ought to buy stock in KFC.  
  
There was a news story he’d half-watched, if a segment on _Good Morning, America_ constitutes a news story. The Dancing Disease had put people off of the more illicit substances—for the time being, at least. But instead of working through whatever issue they were self-medicating for, it seemed as though people were eating their feelings.  
  
Not that he blamed them, frankly. He was as high as a kite most of the time, thanks to Ginger-turned-Whiskey’s exceptional pharmacy, and he was pretty sure he’d gained a stone or more since being laid up. He’d have to put his foot down with Eggsy about the KFC. Well. Not his foot.  
  
Regardless, the stock idea was promising, as long as he managed to sell before the reefer hysteria burst.  
  
“It’s just…” Eggsy rambled on, “It’s just that _something_ ’s changed. Maybe it’s…”  
  
It wasn’t. Whatever Eggsy was going to say wasn’t what had changed with the Crown Princess of Sweden.  
  
Merlin knew exactly what made Eggsy’s heart turn away from playing happy families.  
  
Harry was back.  
  
  
☂☂☂  
  
“I think I’ve had a bit too much,” Harry was whinging, seconds before he tossed up his accounts into the rubbish bin.  
  
No shit.  
  
He’d compromised, Harry had. He’d brought wine instead of grapes, and then he’d made a valiant attempt to convince Merlin that he should have a drink, morphine be damned.  
  
“I fucked Sir Elton John.” Harry blurted. “And I think Eggsy’s in love with you.”  
  
Merlin blinked. He hadn’t expected…any of that.  
  
He didn’t know what to say, but eventually settled on “I think you should have them check your brain again.”  
  
“He frets over you constantly. He has a John Denver playlist on his mobile.”  
  
“John Denver is a musical genius,” Merlin snapped. “And Eggsy frets over everyone.”  
  
Harry sighed and reached for the third bottle of wine. “No,” he said. “He doesn’t.”  
  
He watched Harry pull the cork out with his teeth and gulp directly from the bottle. _Manners Maketh Man, my arse_.  
  
“Do you remember, right after Lee died,” Harry slurred. “And we swived each other in Arthur’s office?”  
  
“Nobody says ‘swive,’ idiot.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“You’ve done well for yourself, though. Elton John is a definite step up.”  
  
“Do you remember afterwards, when we agreed that the job came first? That it could never happen again.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“We were bloody fools.”  
  
  
☂☂☂  
  
“They’re making me train my replacement,” Whiskey was whinging. “Before they’ll send me into the field.”  
  
Merlin absolutely agreed with their decision, but kept his mouth shut. There were a dozen or more agents. There was one control operative. Control was essential personnel—no matter what Charlie fucking Hesketh thought.  
  
“You went,” she accused, petulant enough to not think their positions through.  
  
“And I nearly died. I should have done,” he said. “And, as neither Galahad knows bugger all about the logistics of an international spy organization, Kingsman would have been fucked.”  
  
“Don’t say that.”  
  
Merlin laughed. “It’s true. They’re clever blokes, but not all that helpful with the paperwork.”  
  
“Don’t say that you should’ve died.”  
  
“You asked, before, if I ever wanted to work in the field. Surely you must understand how that goes. The tech monkey out against the big baddies? You don’t even know why you want it.”  
  
Whiskey tsked and fussed with his IV. She connected a syringe to the hose and Merlin felt the morphine hit him like a wave.  
  
“You watch them, day in and day out. They’re brave and they die. They drop like goddamn flies, but they’re heroes. They go out in a shower of bullets and in the darkest part of your heart, you’re jealous. Because you’re going to die sat at your desk, of a bloody heart attack. You’re going to get hit by a lorry while crossing the street. You’re surrounded by all this…this exceptionalism, you devote yourself to it, and it’s all going to end in old age and mediocrity.”  
  
The morphine made his nose itch, made his shoulders itch, but his legs were blessedly, blessedly numb.  
  
“For one shining moment, I had that. I went down in a blaze of glory. I went down fucking _singing_ and I took five men down with me. It was goddamn perfect.”  
  
Until he woke up, with his body and his life in shambles. His friends were dead, most of them, his organization was ruined, and he had to listen to the two idiots he loved more than anything in this bloody, miserable world pine after each other.  
  
It was a fucking mess.  
  
He turned to tell her, to beg her. When her moment comes, to make sure there was no coming back.  
  
She wasn’t there.  
  
☂☂☂  
  
The clock on the wall said 3:34 when he started awake. His head felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool.  
  
“Shh, it’s just me. Whiskey. I just wanted to say that I don’t think it’s the dying that makes us heroes. It’s the living and the loving. And you’ve got that in spades.”  
  
 He wanted to laugh, to brush away what seemed like so much naive optimism. To scream that no, he doesn’t—because Harry loves Eggsy, and Eggsy loves Harry, but Harry’s swiving Elton John and Eggsy’s marrying a princess, and he’s all alone, loving the both of them more than his broken heart could bear.  
  
But Eggsy’s fingers twitched, wrapped around Merlin’s hand, and he was drooling on the sheets. Harry’s fluffy head laid heavily against Merlin’s bandaged thigh on the opposite side of the bed.  
  
He wondered groggily what they must look like, the three of them. A triptych of folly and emotional retardation, most likely. He chuckled to himself, and slept.  
  
  



End file.
